If I ran for president

I got to thinking about how screwed up things have gotten in this country and what I could do about it. Just one man, yeah, but if I ran for president, I could really make a difference. Our government has truly reached the point where it has gotten out of the control of its citizens. Laws are not made by the people or for the people anymore – they are made by lawyers for lawyers, big business, and politicians with totalitarian aims. This can no longer be allowed to continue. Our Founding Fathers knew this day would come:

Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.

John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

Fundamentally, I believe that laws which aim to further the interests of politicians, lawyers, and big business at the expense of the people of the United States, or to control how they live their lives, should be repealed. This country was built on the belief that a large and powerful government is the most dangerous force imaginable, and through decades of our inaction the U.S. government has turned into an uncontrollable monster, with the Bush family as its poster children of our stolen liberty.

I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Ludlow, September 6, 1824

We have not had a president in office yet who has eliminated more laws than he created, and it’s a policy whose time has come. I am not a career politician – I don’t belong to secret societies manipulating the world’s population, I am an ordinary citizen who goes to work every day and sees the world’s problems on the street just like you do – so I do not see more laws and more freedoms taken away as the answer to all of society’s problems as politicians do. Here’s what I will do as president.

• I will end recycling programs and their subsidies. They are wasteful of our time, money and natural resources. If you still believe otherwise, you just haven’t been paying attention. Savings: $8 billion per year.

• I will end the drug war against marijuana that Richard Nixon started just before his resignation prior to impeachment. It was nothing more than a PR distraction from the Vietnam War and Nixon’s other troubles back then, and it has served that purpose all too well for other presidents in morally questionable situations ever since – but it is time for it to come to an end. It is a war we will never win, and it only serves to criminalize people who aren’t committing a real crime. It’s perfectly legal in the Netherlands and things are just fine over there. Tobacco is far more hazardous to your health, and yet we still sell (and tax) that poison legally. I believe we should let people do what they want with their bodies when it harms no one else. It isn’t the government’s job to tell you how to live your life – the freedom to live it any way you want is what makes this country greater than any other, and under my presidency it will once again be up to you. I’ll tax it, sell it with the same requirements as tobacco, and put it under the control of the FDA – its purity will be assured and the tax income will be enormous. Then I’ll let the DEA focus on more serious issues and free all those who are imprisoned for it. And if Arpaio down in Scottsdale wants to argue with me about it, he’ll be looking for another job.

• I will make the U.S. government equally as accountable to the people as public business is to the government under the Sarbanes-Oxley act. Our government is wasting embarrassing amounts of money and lying about it to the American people, and it needs to be held accountable. Savings: $80 billion per year.

• I will repeal Richard Nixon’s insidious Endangered Species Actas it applies to private, non-commercial property. It’s your land, do what you want with it – not what some bureaucrat with an agenda thinks you should.

• I will eliminate all laws which make it illegal to discipline your children, and return control of children and decisions about their upbringing to their parents, rather than the government.

• I will enforce mandatory limits on the annual number of law school graduates and the number of members of the Bar. There are way too many lawyers with bills to pay. I will also impose tort reform which will require the plaintiff to pay the legal costs of the defendant if the plaintiff loses in a frivolous suit against the defendant.

• I will require all states to return the legal drinking age to 18. If you’re old enough to die for your country, you’re old enough to raise a glass to it. I will also require them to return the BAC limit to .12, because it has been proven that lowering the legal limit has no effect on reducing the number of DWI cases (it has sharply increased them) or the severity of drunk-driving crashes, and simply ensnares law-abiding citizens in the legal system as common criminals. This MADD special-interest, neo-prohibitionist lunacy has to stop.

• I will increase the licensing requirements for a driver’s license. Logged and certified minimum times of supervised driving by a licensed adult will be required for at least 2 years on a learner’s permit, and high-performance driver training will be mandatory for all newly licensed drivers similar to the training requirements in Germany. I will also require annual license recertification after age 60.

• I will enforce a limit on immigration to 50,000 people per year and make at least a high-school education, verified by the SAT or ACT, including an English proficiency test, a requirement for U.S. citizenship. This country will no longer import stupidity from the rest of the world. I will make those recently-displaced DEA guys with nothing to do our border patrol and pay for it with the marijuana taxes.

• I will repeal all federal laws which usurp the authority and sovereignty of the states, with the exception of the aforementioned changes.

• I will toss the entire federal tax code and start over from scratch with a 25% flat tax. Tax accountants will need to find another use for their accounting skills.

• I will make it illegal for any federal agency to surveil its citizens in any way without due process of law. Any government official who authorizes it will be tried for high treason against the people of the United States.

• The Patriot Act? Gone. If it’s not stopped soon it will be the cause of the next civil war.

• I will make lobbying illegal. It puts the interests of powerful business groups above those of individual citizens, and it has to stop.

• I will make voting a civic duty as mandatory as jury duty and taxes, but you can log in and do it from your home or office on the Internet.

• I will terminate the FCC’s control over broadcast censorship standards and let the free market have its way. No longer will we be the laughingstock of the entire world with our absurd decency standards controlled by tiny religious special interest groups that have no resemblance to the tastes of the American public. This will allow broadcast radio and television stations fair competition with cable and satellite services who enjoy complete immunity from the FCC’s iron-fisted control.

• I will eliminate the Federal Reserve and its corruption of our monetary system.

• I will make it illegal for municipalities to use money raised by traffic fines as income for the police department, and expose the automated redlight-runner and speeder-camera companies for the moneymaking frauds they are.

• A week will now have 8 days instead of 7, because it’s long overdue.

• In order to restore accountability and adherence to Constitutional principles, any law passed that is found to be unconstitutional will have its authors charged with treason.

Just imagine what a better country this would be, with Dave in charge instead of George W.B.!